June 4, 2008
From TheKCGuy
I accumulate a lot of pocket change for some reason. Now, a little change is good, but I sometimes end up with a hundred dollars or so of pocket change on my desk. I've been working for years on how to get rid of it easily. I could take it to one of those Coinstar things like at Hen House, but they charge a 9% take on the transaction. That's too much for a cheapskate like myself.
Some banks have been rumored to count your change for you. I think the one at State Line and Shawnee Mission Parkway has a counter that you can use if you have an account there. I don't. Once, Commerce Bank handed me a fistful of paper rolls and told me to go home and roll it myself. The alternative, they said, was to leave the bag of change with them, they would send it to the change counting world headquarters or something, and credit my account a few days later. I'm not always to excited about that kind of inconvenience.
For a while, I took it to casinos. This is a pretty good solution, since they deal with large amounts of change and love it when you bring money of any kind there. I once walked into Isle of Capris with a 5 gallon bucket about 2/3rds full of change. No one even raised an eyebrow. Lately, though, most of the casinos have been moving away from coin operated slot machines. For instance, the Argosy no longer has coins from what I can tell. 7th Street Casino never had any, as far as I know. Once, a friend and myself were denied the chance to change his coin into bills or chips at Harrah's, and the cops even questioned us about it. I think that Isle of Capris might be the last one in town that makes it easy to carry in a bucket of coin and exchange it for booze and cash. They don't complain about it at all.
Recently, though, I've come up with a new plan. When I head out to a big-box store like Lowe's or Home Depot, I take a huge pocket of change with me. I don't take the whole jar or bucket, but I take a large fistful from my car ashtray. They have those self-serve cashiers there, and I just stuff those things completely full of change. There's no embarrassment like their might be when handing a cashier 44 pennies and a nickel for something that costs $2.99. I get my two quarters back and go on my way.
